Outside Viewpoint

Business insights from an outside viewpoint. This blog strives to bring articles to the table that offers a fresh perspective on how you could do business better, and things that maybe you should avoid.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Conflict can
destroy a company, or it can be a factor that challenges employees and drives
innovation. It’s up to the supervisors to manage conflict effectively in order to get
positive outcomes. Supervisors need to be able to properly identify the
conflict, and then apply the proper conflict management strategy in order to
make this happen.

Everybody in a leadership position will need to deal with conflict at
some point, and how well they handle it can determine if their career, as well as their organization is
successful or not. In fact, “Supervisors spend more than 25% of their time on conflict
management, and managers spend more than 18% of their time on relational
employee conflicts” according to Wikipedia. Unfortunately, “only 37% of [managers] feel that they are well trained to
handle the conflicts” according to Sinha.

If you let a
conflict linger, or it is not managed correctly, that conflict will most likely
have negative consequences. Some of the negative consequences that can derive from
mismanaging conflict are employee frustration, anger, sabotage, aggression,
insubordination, and absenteeism. Wikipedia says that “Conflict
significantly affects employee morale, turnover, and litigation, which affects
the prosperity of a company, either constructively or destructively. [Turnover]
can cost a company 200% of the employee’s annual salary”.

It may come
as a surprise to you, but conflict isn’t always negative. Sometimes conflict is
a necessary instigator that ignites the changes that are responsible for
improving a company, product or process. Javitch reinforced this when he said “Sometimes a lack of conflict can be just as bad as the alternative. It
all depends on how you deal with it”. He goes on to say
that a moderate level of conflict creates the best environment to fuel
innovation and challenge employees. The key to getting positive results from a
conflict is applying constructive problem solving to it and resolving it.
Conflicts should be treated like an opportunity for improvement.

Maintaining
comprehensive policies can make conflict resolution easier, in some cases.
However, you can’t write a policy for every possible scenario, so many
conflicts will need to be managed on a case by case basis. Based on Certo's work, there are four strategies for conflict
management, including compromising, avoiding, forcing, and resolving.

Compromising
involves giving both parties part of what they want so that they are willing to
live with the decision. It doesn’t resolve the root conflict, and should only
be used for minor conflicts when there isn’t time to truly resolve the issue.

Avoiding is
a method of conflict management where people avoid the conflict all together.
People that use this method regularly may have a false sense of serenity.
However, the issues are still there. Certo does, however, suggest that this
method can be useful when the conflicts are not serious and finding a solution would
be more difficult than the problem justifies. According to Scott, avoidance is
one of the top ten mistakes that can be made when dealing with conflict.

Forcing is a
conflict management strategy where a person, or group, with power makes a
decision and everyone else is expected to accept it. It is a quick method of
conflict management which makes it a useful strategy in an emergency. This
strategy does have some negative side-effects though, which includes creating
frustration among employees, the potential for more future conflict, and
adversely affecting team building.

Resolving is
the conflict management strategy where people actually confront the problem and
solve it. This strategy isn’t always the quickest or the easiest. But, it’s
direct and it is the only method which offers a win-win resolution. This method
leaves both parties better off and frustration is avoided among all parties
involved.

Certo also aid
out a step-by-step guide for initiating conflict resolution.

Step 1 – Understand the conflict.
Step 2 – State the problem in terms of actions and effects.
Step 3 – Listen to the response.
Step 4 – Determine if the problem has been acknowledged. If not, restate the
problem and return to step 3. If it has been acknowledged, proceed to step 5.
Step 5 – Find a solution together.
Step 6 – Restate the solution.
Step 7 – Implement the solution.

“Before a
supervisor can respond effectively to a conflict, he or she needs to understand
the real nature of that conflict. Who is involved? What is the source of the
conflict? A supervisor is likely to respond differently to a conflict that
results from a clash of opinions than one stemming from frustration over
limited resources” according to Certo. With that being said, part of
understanding the conflict is identifying what type of conflict it is. There
are four main types of conflict, including:

·Intrapersonal
Conflict – conflict within an individual

·Interpersonal
Conflict – conflict between individuals

·Structural
Conflict – conflict stemming from how the organization is structured

·Strategic
conflict – conflict intentionally created to achieve an objective

There are a
couple of scenarios when the steps we use to resolve a conflict needs to change
a little. The first is when the supervisor is a partied to the conflict, and
the second is when the supervisor needs to mediate conflict resolution.

There comes
a time in every supervisor’s career when they are a part of a conflict. When
this happens they need to respond to that conflict in a way that makes coming
to a resolution possible. To do this, they first need to listen openly to the
complaint. Then, they need to interpret the problem into actions and effects.
Next, the supervisor should agree something that the other person has said. At
this point, the supervisor and the other party need to work together to find a
solution. Once a solution is found, both parties need to agree on how to
implement the solution. And finally, they need to implement the solution.

Another
scenario that a supervisor is likely to encounter is one where they need to
mediate conflict. When a supervisor needs to mediate a conflict, they should
follow these steps that Certo gave us.

1.Establish a constructive environment.

2.Identify the problem.

3.Hove both parties state what they
want to accomplish and what will satisfy them.

4.Restate what both parties position is
to be sure that you understand correctly.

5.Work with both parties to identify
possible solutions, and focus on the future.

6.Encourage the employees to select a
solution that benefits both of them, even if they need to combine or modify the
solutions.

7.Summarize the conflict and chosen
resolution. Make sure everyone know what they need to do.

As we’ve
seen, it’s up to the supervisor to identify and properly manage conflict in
order to make the conflict a positive force in the organization. To do this
they need to properly identify the conflict and apply the appropriate conflict
management strategy. If the supervisor cannot manage conflict properly, the
business will most likely suffer.